Tag Archive for Michigan Legislature

There has been an impressive amount of grassroots fervor that has resulted from the National Popular Vote push by Republican legislators in Lansing.

As I am sure you are aware, the National Popular Vote scheme would destroy the electoral college and game our system so that voters in Los Angeles, Chicago, New York City, and other liberal-dominated population centers would control the entire nation forevermore. It would have meant Hillary Clinton winning the Presidency in 2016, and all the power of Michigan voters would effectively be nullified.

After it was revealed that Republicans were wined and dined with a trip to Hawaii and other lavish trips paid for by lobbyists, outrage erupted immediately. Legislators were inundated with calls and emails from angry constituents, and we were given assurances that the legislation in the state House and Senate to enact NPV was dead. House Speaker Tom Leonard admitted as much.

“I support the electoral college and the Constitution as our framers intended,” Leonard said to journalist Brandon Hall. “I have no interest in taking this bill up during the rest of my tenure as Speaker.”

I have something that I am happy to unveil to you today: The Michigan Patriot Action Center. A team of conservative patriots in Oakland County have been working on it for several months, and we are very proud of what we have come up with!

This legislative center will help you stay up-to-date on bills that directly impact your freedom and your pocketbook. It is regularly updated with new legislative action updates every week. So you always know the status of each bill, which committee the bill is in, when a relevant committee hearing will take place, basic talking points about the legislation, and receive instructions on how to take productive action to move the bill forward.

All of this information is available on the internet but it is often scattered and difficult to find. Sometimes the legislation itself is difficult to decipher because it was written by lobbyists in a deliberately vague manner, and activists might not know how to describe it. That is why we analyze each bill, and provide a basic script for you to use during outreach. We are centralize all of the pertinent information to make productive action much easier.

I do bill tracking around the country for the Tenth Amendment Center, and sometimes only a few dozen phone calls can move a bill in the right direction so if we utilize this bill center to its full potential, we can all make a real difference. Additionally, we are always working to improve the project. Right now, it is hosted from Google docs which is very easy to use. We are always looking to expand so if you have any comments, please email us. We are also organizing a group of individuals in each state rep district and state sen district to increase the power of this center.

Is University Indoctrination Really a Qualification Required for Political Office?

Sunday, the Detroit News ran a charming agitprop piece bemoaning the fact that 20% of Michigan’s legislators “lack a formal higher education degree, ….. raising the question of whether a college degree is a prerequisite for leadership and political office”. The snide implication of this stooge for the university left is that 20% of Michigan’s legislators are ignorami, but her devious political subtext is that 20% of Michigan’s legislators have missed the political indoctrination necessary to be good left wing robots.

William Penn, Michigan State University professor of creative writing, greeted his first day of class with an anti-Republican rant. Campus Reform, a project of the Arlington, Va.-based Leadership Institute, has a video featuring the professor telling his students that Republicans want to prevent “black people” from voting. He added that “this country still is full of closet racists” and described Republicans as “a bunch of dead white people — or dying white people”. To a student who had apparently displayed displeasure with those comments, Professor Penn barked, “You can frown if you want.” He gesticulated toward the student and added, “You look like you’re frowning. Are you frowning?” When the professor’s conduct was brought to the attention of campus authorities, MSU spokesman Kent Cassella said, “At MSU it is important the classroom environment is conducive to a free exchange of ideas and is respectful of the opinions of others.”

That mealy-mouthed response is typical of university administrators. Professor Penn was using his classroom to proselytize students. That is academic dishonesty and warrants serious disciplinary or dismissal proceedings. But that’s not likely. Professor Penn’s vision is probably shared by his colleagues, seeing as he was the recipient of MSU’s Distinguished Faculty Award in 2003.

The Mackinac Center for Public Policy has created a free, interactive smartphone app which tracks state and federal bills pending floor action and your legislators’ votes.on those bills. This useful app is called VoteSpotter and has has been debugged to the point where it works well. There are only about 1,000 Android users of this app presently, but it is growing in popularity. It is available from both the Google PlayStore and the Apple IOS App Store.

You enter your voting address and the program determines your state and federal representatives from its database. Then you receive regular notifications of impending legislation soon to be voted upon by those legislators, described in plain English. You can then contact your legislator on any legislation for which you receive a notification, indicate your preference before the vote, and then concur or disagree with your legislator after the vote. Legislators have access to the ‘polls’, but not your individual information unless you elect to send them an email through the program.

Mackinac Center is now in the process of extending this application beyond the State of Michigan.